Free! Eternal Summer episode 1: the swimmers are back!

Hehehe, that was hilarious.

Summary

We meet all the members of the Iwatobi swim club once again, except this time they are on friendly terms with Rin. Meanwhile in Samezuka High’s swim club, Rin has been named captain and is in charge of screening the new members, and also meets a new transfer student who’s hotness defines his clear importance in this new season of Free!

Impression

As a good re-introduction of all the characters, this second season set off with a good start, giving off the exact same vibes as the first and yet still making us laugh at how dumb this all is. Honestly, I’ll never stop laughing at the fan service in this show, as it is so blatantly obvious; and yet, it really works. This episode reminded me of the first few episodes of the first season, which was refreshing after having just recently seen the latest episodes which were much more dramatic.

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First, since the first season of Free! was not blogged here on 0-Gate, here’s a quick impression of my thoughts on the show. I see Free! as a show with an absolutely great concept: ecchi for girls is basically absent in anime, and for us to get this wonderful piece of quality full of it made me happy, even though I cringed often over the lack of more-than-just-fanservice. Despite this detail, though, I still somewhat enjoyed the story, and I could still rate the story and especially the quality much higher than nay other reverse harem I’ve seen so far. Now that this second season has come out, I shall try blogging it as best as I can, and hopefully not cringe too much over the pointless fanservice (I’m a girl, but it still gets annoying).

But enough of this. Now that this second season is out, what can we expect? From this first episode, I would be tempted to say “nothing.” All we got is the same shit as in the first season, and so far the only difference is the lack of bullshit drama and the appearance of a new character which I really don’t care about. I guess he has to become the cause for the next round of bullshit drama, huh… If he isn’t, then the show might have a little bit of trouble keeping us entertained as the episodes go along; last season had quite a bit of drama, but now that everything was solved last season it’s a wonder what other problems our main characters will face.

Quality-wise, it seems as though the animation was worked on quite a bit since just a year ago; the movement of water, as well as the swimming motions, were extremely fluid. My eyes were sparkling last season because I like bright and shiny things, but this time I was actually impressed with the fluidity of the animation overall. Despite this big change, however, it seems like the character drawing remained pretty much the same; at least, they have pretty eyes and even prettier muscles.